Bolus of Mendes

Bolus of Mendes (Greek: Βῶλος ὁ Μενδήσιος, Bōlos ho Mendēsios; fl. 3rd century BC) was a Hellenized Egyptian philosopher,[1][2] a neo-Pythagorean writer of works of esoterica and medical works, who worked in Ptolemaic Egypt.[3] The Suda, and Eudocia after him,[4] mention a Pythagorean philosopher of Mendes in Egypt, who wrote on marvels, potent remedies, and astronomical phenomena. The Suda, however, also describes a Bolus who was a philosopher of the school of Democritus,[5] who wrote Inquiry, and Medical Art, containing "natural medical remedies from some resources of nature." But, from a passage of Columella,[6] it appears that Bolos of Mendes and the follower of Democritus were one and the same person; and he seems to have lived following the time of Theophrastus, whose work On Plants he appears to have known.[7]

For another name identifying a pseudographical work Bolos of Mendes, see Pseudo-Democritus.

Notes
  1. Ogden, Daniel; Ogden, Professor of Ancient History Daniel (2002). Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-515123-7.
  2. Campbell, Gordon Lindsay (2014-08-28). The Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-103515-9.
  3. Paul Kroh, ed. Lexikon der Antiken Autoren, (Stuttgart) 1972:111; Max Wellmann in Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 3.1, (Stuttgart) 1897:676–677, s.v. "Bolos 3".
  4. Suda, Bolus, β482; cf. Eudocia
  5. Suda, Bolus, β481
  6. Columella, vii. 5; cf. Stobaeus, Serm. 51
  7. Stephanus of Byzantium Apsynthus; Scholium ad Nicand. Theriac. 764
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